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From the publisher’s summary: “Until two years ago, Rainbow was ruled by dragumens. Now, there’s a human Empress on the throne, and she rules with an iron fist. Breaking promises after promises, she controls the people with lies, taxes, and murder. Everywhere in the land, rebellion is brewing.
“Gangav, the fallen dragumen prince who wants nothing more than revenge, rallies humans and dragumens to his cause. Sasha, his best friend and fiercest supporter, is eager to help him and is spoiling for a fight. Alexander, on the other hand, never wanted to be a part of it, but finds himself with no other choice when tragedy strikes home, bringing the cruelty of the empress to his doorstep. When news of a spy amongst their ranks turns everything on its head and the sudden outbreak of a new illness threatens the safety of the rebels, the three of them must find a way to relocate their camp before they are discovered, or the rebellion may very well end before it even begins.”
As I began reading this book, I was interested in the world built by the author. She obviously put a lot of thought and planning into building this world and the people who live here. The distrust between the different races of dragumen (half dragon, half human) and their claims to superiority over each other seems very realistic. Also, the divisive class structure placing dragumen above humans is all too familiar.
One complaint I had was the use of world-specific terminology without explaining to the audience what it meant. For example, it took me almost the whole book to figure out what a dirt-day was. Am I just slow?
The characters in this novel are believable, and many of them draw the reader into their lives. A few are just too sketchily described to explain their importance to the story, however, and left me scratching my head. I think part of the problem is that this book is written as the first of a series. Many of the characters introduced here have no purpose until later volumes, but we don’t have those yet. This makes reading this book kind of frustrating.
And, since I brought it up, the lack of any resolution to conflict made me regret reading the book. I like things cleaned up and left tidy at the end of a book. I spent as much time writing the ending to my book as I did most of the rest because I wanted to know what happened. That’s just how I like my stories. If the next part of the story was available to read now, it may make me feel better, but not having any chance to answer my questions makes me not want to read any more from this author. Of course, the questions that need answering will be exactly what makes me anxiously await the next book.
The last problem I saw in this book was the grammar. In the first half of the story, there were very few mistakes, but they got worse as the book progressed. Most were simple typos and left-out words that should have been caught in proofreading.
Overall, I liked The Blood Prince. The story was good and the characters believable. I will, more than likely, read the next in the series when it comes out.
Rated: High. There are more than five uses of strong language as well as descriptive violence in several scenes.
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